colofon-english

English reader. For the foreseeable future, this page will be the only one translated into English on my entire website. For much of the past fifty years, many of the most interesting ideas in architecture have been formulated in the English language. One could venture to say that since then, English has fulfilled a role similar to what Latin variations fulfilled during the Renaissance. Similar, but not quite the same. A common trend can be traced in how websites of artists, architects, and art and architectural writers are written today: regardless of the latitude of the website's owner, English seems to be as pervasive as it has been in architectural thought during the last half century. Although it is far from being the only convention widely accepted (consider statements, for example), it certainly is a good candidate for being the dominant one; I don't have much interest in continuing to passively perpetuate it. That's why I have decided to limit the scope of English as much as possible within this site. This doesn't mean that I will never include work written in this language on this site, or that I don't find value in English-written work (quite the contrary). But for now, it lacks sense since part of this site's interest is to bring works into Spanish that have not yet been translated into this language, and eventually, produce work outside of it that may or may not migrate to this language, but that will have a distinct origin from it.

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My name is +++++++ (known on this site as Editor) and this is my website. I was trained as an architect (even though I have spent most of my professional life as an editor and translator) and Cruz negra is the name I chose for the individual and collective works born out of the passions and disenchantments cultivated throughout this training. I harbour very little interest in plastering this site with replicas of things I have done elsewhere or turning it into a curriculum vitae for the Web 3.0, not only because it seems a pity to devote so much effort to such a banal purpose, but also because, to be frank, it seems rather boring to me. There are already plenty of platforms available for such purposes; I see no need to (re)create another one. I also have no interest in using this site to make “connections,” nor to gain economic benefits, nor to advertise my ethical alignments with the “urgently political” trends of the moment, nor to talk about myself in the third person. Although beautiful, I see no interest in hanging medals on this site. No.

On this site I gather words (both official and unofficial; translated and my own) and images (both found and fabricated) whose central point is architecture, understood not as mere construction or as mastery over the knowledge of form, but as a form of knowledge. As knowledge, it is immeasurable and exceeds single individuals. The ways in which it circulates, as well as the places from and the tools and conventions with which it is produced, are as important as the objects themselves that emanate from them. Cruz negra is an attempt to study such forms and to see what implications they have on what we do in architecture. As such, its interest lies in the intersections, translations, transactions, collisions and conflicts between the abstract and the concrete; between language and space; between form and labour; between architecture and life. Anyway -and in simple terms-, Cruz negra is a machine for studying architecture. This is the simple impetus that drives this website, and in the clarification of its relationships lies its only hope.

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Materials. Cruz negra is written entirely in HTML, CSS and -as little as possible- JavaScript. I write, program and maintain all the content -visible and invisible to the reader- of this site using the venerable free code editor, GNU Emacs. For the most part, I use its HTML, Org and Org-Roam modes, in conjunction with Magit for version control. The typefaces used are Cardo (serif), Jost (sans serif) and Inconsolata (monospaced), designed by David Perry, Owen Earl and Raph Levien, respectively.

All original content on this site is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, or later. All code used is distributed under the GPL, v.3 or later.

Contact. Despite the abrasive impression this colophon may give, I'm interested in knowing what issues Cruz negra raises in its readers, but I see no value in exposing such issues to the eyes of others. I prefer the use of email (at the bottom of each page of this website) over any other means. In case you require it, my public encryption key (remember to send me yours, otherwise, I won't be able to respond via encrypted message) is:

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Cruz negra, index, images, syllabi, calendars, colofon ^EN

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Cruz negra, index, images, syllabi, calendars, colofonEN

Cruz negra, index, images, syllabi, calendars, colofon ^EN